Michelle Obama Enters the Oscar Arena with Her First Endorsement of the Season

With just 11 days(!) until the Oscars, the First Lady has shown her support for one of this year’s best-picture candidates by hosting a screening and post-screening discussion at the White House. The film is Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Michelle Obama lovingly championed it Wednesday morning during the event, which was officially billed as a Black History Month workshop.

Of course, the First Lady was not appealing to actual Academy voters; she screened it for 80 students from middle and high schools in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, who convened in the State Dining Room. “We are all here today for you,” Obama told the group. “This event is important to me, not only because I love and believe in this film, but also because I deeply love and believe in all of you.” Per the Washington Post, Obama said that she considers the film—about a six-year-old girl struggling to survive in her bayou community as icecaps melt nearby—to be one of the most important movies released in a long time.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is nominated in the directing, best-picture, best-actress, and best-adapted-screenplay categories. Quvenzhané Wallis, age nine, the youngest best-actress nominee ever, joined the cast and crew for the discussion, wearing a pink sweater, pink pants, a pink ribbon, and a pink iteration of her now-signature awards-season accessory—a dog-shaped purse, this time modeled after a poodle. Wallis told the students assembled, “Keep your head up, never let it down, and believe in God, he’s always there by your side, he’s never going to leave.”

In November, Barack Obama hosted a private screening of another Oscar contender, Lincoln, at the White House. It is not clear how many, if any, audience members fell asleep during the “nap-worthy” picture or if Michelle was present for that event. The president and First Lady are not the first political figures to speak out about this year’s Academy Award frontrunners. Several weeks ago, Connecticut congressman Joe Courtney requested that Steven Spielberg change his movie(!) to correct a historical inaccuracy. In subsequent interviews, the politician, for whomArgo director Ben Affleck campaigned in 2006, revealed that he thought that Argo, coincidentally, “was great.” Courtney has since said that he had no communication with Affleck before writing Spielberg and called all conspiracy theories “hilarious.”